There is an ink jet printer as an ink jet recording apparatus capable of performing recording on a variety of recording mediums such as plain paper and a plastic thin plate. The ink jet printer includes a head that ejects ink from nozzle holes. The ink is ejected as fine liquid droplets from the nozzle holes of the head toward the recording mediums, whereby the recording is made onto the recording mediums.
With regard to the ink, for the purpose of preventing an image quality deterioration owing to a liquid slippage after the ink concerned is shot, reducing a drying load, enhancing fixing properties to the recording mediums, and so on, such ink is sometimes used, which is in a solid state at ordinary temperatures, and is molten by being heated. The ink as described above has a merit in being easy to handle since the ink is in a solid state at a non-recording time because of the ordinary temperatures.
Moreover, there is known a printer configuration of heating a tank reserving the ink, a head and flow passages thereof so that the ink cannot solidify in insides of these respective units in the case of performing the recording by using the ink as described above (for example, refer to Patent Literatures 1 and 2).
In the printer with such a configuration, a pressure (back pressure) to be applied to the ink in the head is controlled while heating the ink, whereby appropriate ink ejection from the head is realized (for example, refer to Patent Literatures 1 and 2). Note that, as a specific pressure control method, there is known such a method, in which a difference in water head value between an ink level in insides of the nozzles of the inkjet head and a liquid level of the ink in an ink storage unit is controlled by a back pressure control device, and a meniscus position of the nozzles is controlled so that the ink does not flow out from the nozzles.